Somebody like me, say, would have looked at a colony of 1.5 million bats hanging under a major bridge and thought, Ick! Rodents! Flying rats! And, aren’t bats rabid? But the unnamed PR genius saw an opportunity that’s become one of this city’s great tourist attractions.

At dusk, from March to November, crowds gather at the Congress Avenue Bridge to wait for nightly departure of what is now the largest urban bat colony in the country. That’s where my husband and I were last night — waiting with tourists and locals who sported cameras and leaned expectantly on the railing. On either side of the river, small crowds had gathered, too, sitting on the grass. Two boats populated with onlookers hovered just on the other side of the bridge.

As it grew darker, camera lights flashed from every direction — tiny points of light. My husband and I couldn’t get a place at the railing, so we stood on tiptoes, craning our necks. Nothing. Just an iridescent sky, with silvery clouds, easing into night as the sun set. We have the most beautiful skies on earth in Texas; it’s a world you can lose yourself in, that makes even the most determined agnostic think there might possibly be a God — otherwise, where did this vast and gorgeous sky come from?

But my husband and I were here to see the bats, not the sky. We figured the bats owed us one, since they hadn’t shown up last week when we came here with friends from New York. But here we were, once again, waiting. The wind picked up a little and it grew cooler (the kind of coolness we will pine for, come July and August) and we waited, with everyone else, for the show to begin.

Still, activities aren’t always that simple and straightforward. We were here because I had to leave the condo, had to move, had to try to divert myself for a little while. We had just heard the kind of news that crushes your soul and reminds you of how merciless life can be: A young man from our old neighborhood, who had often played at our house and hung out with our son, had been killed in a car wreck.

I kept seeing him, with his sweet, dear face, I kept seeing his mother and aching for her. The death of someone my age is sad, but the death of someone young is something entirely different and unbearable.

So there we were, waiting for the bats that weren’t showing up yet again, hoping for what I don’t know. Just a little release for a few minutes. Couldn’t we have that? No, we couldn’t.

So, we turned and walked back down the sidewalk on the bridge, when a sudden murmur rose up and people applauded and cameras flashed. We moved back toward the railing, peering through it, as a dark flood of wings swept out and disappeared into the night. They poured out endlessly, occasional wings illuminated by camera bulbs — just an instant of light on one small winged body, almost like the curve of an envelope flap — then the darkness again.

Even when the camera flashes had extinguished and you couldn’t see much any more, you knew that rush of movement still went on as more than a million little bodies hurtled on, guided by sound and instinct into the night. After a few minutes, my husband and I left, walking slowly, finding our own way home.

We returned to a world where hearts had broken and lives would never be the same and no one was safe. But for a few short minutes, we had escaped, we had flown, we had seen the bats.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

]]>http://www.geezersisters.com/the-strange-brief-comfort-of-wings/feed/18“Is This How It’s Going to be From Now On?”http://www.geezersisters.com/is-this-how-its-going-to-be-from-now-on/
http://www.geezersisters.com/is-this-how-its-going-to-be-from-now-on/#commentsMon, 20 Dec 2010 16:45:49 +0000http://www.geezersisters.com/?p=4101I’ve forgotten who said it to me or when it was, exactly. But I can still see the expression on her face — the puzzlement, the pain. She and her husband had lost one parent, then another. There were more diseases on the horizon, more bad news coming. She was steeling herself for more.

“Is this how it’s going to be from now on?”

It was a question about her age and mine, this time of life, when the losses of friends and family members are mounting. This year, I lost my father, an old friend from graduate school, my friend Pat. Two other friends are seriously ill, too.

Last week, another friend, Gary Chapman, died suddenly on a kayaking trip in Guatemala. He was 58, seemingly robust, but died from a massive heart attack. His wife, Carol, my dear friend, is suddenly a widow. She and her husband lived a passionate, adventurous life, full of travel and friends and long conversations. Together, they were complete.

Now I look at her face, ravaged by grief. I know she will survive this, because I know how strong she is and how many caring friends she has. But it’s going to be hard and lonely. She knows that, less than a week after his death. She knows she will get through it, somehow, but right now, she is living from minute to minute.

So, yes. This is how it’s going to be from now on. This is the human condition, this is how it always was. It’s this, but it’s more. I think of our wonderful friend Bob Solomon, the philosopher, and his great capacity for love and friendship. I’ve always loved and drawn comfort from his words, which were spoken at his funeral, “Gratitude, I want to suggest, is not only the best answer to the tragedies of life. It is the best approach to life itself.”

In this holiday season, I am grateful that Carol and Gary had so many full and good years together. I’m grateful for birth of Collins Grace Alonzo, the first grandchild of my good friend, Steve Collins — who promises to be a doting grandfather.

I’m happy both our kids will be here for the holidays, that we’ll give the last holiday party in this house we’ve loved, that my husband and I still laugh and take great pleasure in each other.

This is how it’s going to be — forever and from now on. We celebrate whenever we can, we dance, we drink, we sing off-key. We seek as much light and life as we can get. When it grows darker, we light another candle for as long as we can, trying to be grateful for every flicker of fire. Because, really, how else do you live?

Persecuted for your religious beliefs? Move on. Jump on a rickety ship and sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Who cares if you get seasick or you can’t swim? There’s got to be something better on the other side of the ocean. They don’t call it a New World for nothing.

Feeling kind of crowded in your New World settlement, what with all those nasty witch hunts and long, boring sermons? Look at the western horizon and follow your nose. There’s a limitless land out there, teeming with wildlife and forests and some pesky people called Indians who’ll get in your way. Who cares? Keep moving on.

After a few generations, in fact, Americans get so good at moving on, always west, we come up with a new name for our habit: Manifest Destiny. It’s catchy, it’s imperative, it excuses a truckload of sins and slaughters.

I’m one of these Americans divided in my own skin, one-quarter native American, three-quarters English and Scots-Irish. Most of my ancestors were the pale-skinned, spunky, pushy, move-on types who bore God knows how many horrific hardships and rutted roads and mud huts to eventually spawn someone like me, who can’t even stand to camp out for a night. This is Manifest Destiny? (Given my decided lack of enthusiasm for Nature, I’m sure I’d be a tragic disappointment to my Native American forebears, as well.)

But that strays, as usual, from the point. The point is that the frontier got chewed up and paved and strip-malled and the whole move on, go-west movement got stymied by the Pacific Ocean and the price of California real estate. So, we’re a nation of go-getters and movers-on without new land to grab. Now what?

As far as I can tell, the same restless, can-do spirit remains quintessentially American. But it’s mutated into more of an emotional realm, where we tell ourselves stories of how we must move on, where we admire optimism above all other qualities. We don’t linger in the mire of sadness and loss. Get on with it! Push forward! Above all, just keep moving.

Which is, obviously, what I should be doing, too. My friend’s funeral was two days ago. I saw old friends whose faces I barely recognized. We talked and laughed about long-gone times in the past, we told funny stories, we drank. But that was yesterday. Today should be something else, something fresh and hopeful and new.

I admire this forward-looking American spirit, which I recognize I don’t have enough of. (I mean, let’s be honest: The character I always identified with in the Bible was Lot’s wife. She swiveled around to look at what she’d left behind and turned into a pillar of salt. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson there.)

But I also recognize the limitations of always moving on, of never lingering in sadness. Always in a hurry, always moving ahead, you lose something. You miss some kind of depth and richness of experience. You forget memories that are wonderful, even if they’re painful to recall.

Which is perhaps the greatest pain of all, when a longtime friend dies: A part of your own past disappears, as well. You’re one of the sole keepers of what’s gone.

I’m remembering the time a group of us were in Cape Cod 10 years ago. We’d already had a minor wreck, but every trip has its mishaps. We were sitting outside in a small town, when a bridal party swept past in a coach pulled by horses. It was such a beautiful scene that we all teared up. Except for Pat, who screamed, “Wait! Have you signed a prenup? I’ll do it for free!”

Move on, don’t wallow, don’t linger. Good advice for another, better day. Not for me, not for today. I’m rambling along incoherently and randomly, thinking about unrelated things like American history and long-gone frontiers and times that are over. If you see a pillar of salt, you’ll know who it is.

But no one had told me I couldn’t, so there I was, careening through a universe of harsh sunlight and fuzzy objects, my pupils expanded to big, black buttons under my sunglasses. My eyes take to those dilation drops like Sarah Palin to a crowd of screaming, right-wing thugs, and I knew I could count on another several hours of near-blindness.

My eyes had already been prodded and measured and peered into, and all I can say is that the way they now test for glaucoma isn’t nearly as bad as the medieval torture chamber of tricks they used to pull out. The ophthalmologist had suggested bifocals, but I figured I’d think about that later, when my pupils shrank back to normal. In the meantime, I was meeting my friend Bob for lunch and had to park my car. I kept blindly punching the green button to add time to my parking permit. By the time I put my nose up to the parking machine, I could barely make out that I’d bought enough parking time to stay till dark.

I walked to the restaurant, less dangerous as a pedestrian than a driver, but still. Aren’t your other senses supposed to improve when your sight is compromised? Not mine. I was trying so hard to see that I couldn’t hear, either. I told Bob all my problems and tried to make it funny, which is the dysfunctional way I try to handle my life when everything is crazy and painful. After all, in my convoluted view of the universe, you should always bring something to the table other than grief — and it was way too early for alcohol.

If Bob thought my pumped-up eyes made me look like a drug addict, he didn’t mention it, but he did say he was sorry about my friend Pat’s death earlier that day.

I drove home, thinking of Mr. Magoo and wondering whether anybody but me even remembered him, trying to concentrate on the overly bright, glaring, harshly lit world around me, hoping not to ram into any large, unmovable objects. Our house, newly on the market, was being shown twice that afternoon, so I couldn’t stay there long. These days, our house is so pristine and clean and streamlined it’s hardly ours any longer. I thought, once again, how real estate — which we invest with all our dreams and money and desperate hopes of stability and permanence — never really belongs to us the way we pretend it does. We’re all tenants and who knows when the damned lease is going to expire?

Somewhere in the living room, I could feel something, some presence, and I knew who it was. It was there, it was oddly soothing on a sad, tumultuous day, then it was gone. Just like that.

My eyes slowly began to lose their dilation as the sun went down. It was a funny thing to contemplate bifocals, to think about adjusting to them. Look up for distances, down for things that are closer; learn to ignore the line in the middle. When your pupils get back to normal, theoretically, the light around you shouldn’t be too blinding. But you never know. Sometimes, you just have to close your eyes when the world is too harsh.

(Copyright 2010 by Ruth Pennebaker)

]]>http://www.geezersisters.com/driving-blind/feed/15Good Grief, Bad Griefhttp://www.geezersisters.com/good-grief-bad-grief/
http://www.geezersisters.com/good-grief-bad-grief/#commentsWed, 19 May 2010 15:07:35 +0000http://www.geezersisters.com/?p=3097I’ve been a fortunate person for someone of my age. Grief is an unfamiliar emotion to me. Over the past few days, I’ve been astonished by its insidious power.

1) I can’t think very well. That’s why I’m making another list. Lists require no transitions. They create their own kind of shape. They make you feel organized and in control when you’re a mess.

You should see my to-do lists: Call minister. Notify people. Make decisions about Biblical passages and hymns for the service. I don’t have to put remember to grieve on my to-do list. It comes and goes as it will.

2) Normally, I’m a fairly energetic person. I walk at a brisk pace. Right now, I have no energy whatsoever.

I would say I’m emptied out, but I’m not. I am heavy and weighed-down.

3) I think of a good idea. Go to a movie. Yes, a movie! Perfect! “We’re going to a movie,” I tell my husband. He nods and tells me to wait a few minutes until he’s finished writing something.

A few minutes later, I have changed my mind. A movie? That sounds terrible. What an awful idea. I want to lie on the couch and never move again.

4) My sister writes that Daddy loved the 23rd Psalm and the hymn “He lives!” I remember that hymn, standing to sing it in a church with my parents. It lingers with me, its chorus repeating again and again. Sometimes, I find myself mouthing the words.

5) I wake in the middle of the night thinking about my father’s hands. My mother once told me she fell in love with my father because of his big, strong, capable hands.

When I visited him in the assisted-living center, we would hold hands. I wish I’d known, when we left Austin in August, that that was the last time I would ever touch his hands. I didn’t stay long enough. I never stayed long enough. I never thought this would be the last time.

7) I have a need to be useful. I am always reading, puttering, working. Not now. I am useless, aimless.

8. My husband and I, normally mild-mannered sorts, spend our time getting into loud arguments with people over the phone about arrangements. We seem to intuitively play good-cop, bad-cop — somehow never arguing with the same person.

All the emails about arrangements my husband sends to my sister have the word assholes in the subject line. He also repeatedly refers to one guy as a “dufus.” I tell him he needs to use the proper spelling, doofus. I may be stupid with stress right now, but I still have standards.

9) The death of a second parent is different from the death of a first. Something bigger dies with a second parent — a generation, a marriage, a status of being someone’s child.

10) Relief comes in strange ways, shows up in strange settings. We go to a Yankees game with our friends Mary Jo and Bill. The organist plays “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Mary Jo drags me to my feet and puts her arm around me. I sing — no, scream — the words, swaying back and forth, yelling at the blue skies, the swaying crowds, the crazy spectacle of it all. I don’t care if I never get back.

]]>http://www.geezersisters.com/good-grief-bad-grief/feed/21Turning Up the Volumehttp://www.geezersisters.com/turning-up-the-volume/
http://www.geezersisters.com/turning-up-the-volume/#commentsFri, 30 Jan 2009 20:32:43 +0000http://www.geezersisters.com/?p=1082There are people whose entire lives are accompanied by music. They wake up and turn it on. They work better listening to it. They can’t imagine living their lives in silence.

I like silence. It helps me work better. I can think more easily when it’s quiet.

Over the years, I’ve noticed, I churn up the sound and listen to music when I am overcome by emotion — usually grief. Every time I drove to visit my father, whose Alzheimer’s was steadily progressing, I yanked up the volume on the CD. The music seemed to crowd out everything else — the helplessness, the horror, the sadness. I couldn’t think about anything. I could just let myself go.

Today, in the midst of some unexpected news of a friend’s death in Dallas, I took to listening to Floyd Kramer’s Last Date again and again. Driving through town, I listened to it countless times — the piano, the strings, the sweetness and grief and longing of it. I thought of how big and robust and exuberant this friend was; how could any illness have possibly felled him? I tried to imagine his wife, who’s also a dear friend, without him after their long years together. I tried — but not very hard — to understand the incomprehensible.

The song ended and I pressed the button to play it again. Again and again. I’ll play it and re-play it, try to burst my eardrums from its volume, try to fill my aching heart with it.

Funny, the things you can control in life. You can hear the same song again and again, you can demand to hear it again, you can use it to temporarily salve something painful with its clamor and harmonies. But finally, after a time, it doesn’t work any longer. You’re left with the silence and the ringing of your ears and the awareness of what’s been lost, what’s never coming back.

(Copyright 2009 by Ruth Pennebaker)

]]>http://www.geezersisters.com/turning-up-the-volume/feed/3Stages of National TV Heartbreakhttp://www.geezersisters.com/stages-of-national-tv-heartbreak/
http://www.geezersisters.com/stages-of-national-tv-heartbreak/#commentsThu, 04 Sep 2008 16:11:41 +0000http://geezersisters.wordpress.com/?p=313Forget Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and her five stages of grief and her umlaut. What did that chick know about grief? She never got rejected by national TV.

When it comes to this kind of profound heartbreak, you’re on your own. Try these steps:

1) Go around saying you’ve had creative differences with the director. Oh, yes, Errol Morris. Yeah, the famous documentary director. Well, you see, Errol wanted me to do the whole star trip, but I just wasn’t into it. I’m too, like, unpretentious and grounded.

2) If no one believes this, since your friends are all a bunch of I-told-you-so, reality-based harpies, deny you were spending three-quarters of your waking hours talking about your national TV debut and imminent stardom. Ask if they’re taking their meds, since that may be interfering with their memory. If necessary, make new friends.

3) Listen to “I Will Survive” 157 times at top volume. Lip-synch the words. Then, when they’re memorized, belt them out. GO! WALK OUT THE DOOR! … YOU’RE NOT WELCOME ANY MORE (ERROL)!

4) Remind self that people can’t stand being around bitter, obsessive, whining losers. What a turn-off!

5) Examine possibility of age-discrimination lawsuit.

6) Take time out for fun. Watch Sarah Palin’s speech. Scream at the TV. Wonder why Sarah Palin is on national TV and you’re not. Criticize her hair.

7) You know those people who can’t stand being around bitter, obsessive losers? Yeah, well, too bad. Screw’em.

(Copyright 2008 by Ruth Pennebaker)

]]>http://www.geezersisters.com/stages-of-national-tv-heartbreak/feed/4TEMPESTShttp://www.geezersisters.com/tempests/
http://www.geezersisters.com/tempests/#respondFri, 19 Oct 2007 22:04:05 +0000http://geezersisters.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/tempests/I began the day interviewing a friend, who’s a philosophy professor, about the endurance of Shakespeare’s works over more than four centuries. We sat and drank coffee, and she talked about his genius for creating and portraying rounded characters who arouse our understanding — and often, our sympathy.

As I’d known it would, our conversation ended with a discussion of her own recent, great loss, with her husband’s death a few months ago. Amazing to shift from more of an abstract conversation to talking of something that almost seemed alive and visible at the table — this still-fresh grief. I think we all understand it will be a part of her forever. At this point, she still has so much to do — the “business” of death. But she knows there’s a time beyond that when she will have to decide what to do with the rest of her life. I’d guess that these business details and minutiae are some kind of comfort to her and it will be difficult to move beyond them. They’re like chemotherapy is with cancer — difficult and miserable, but a distraction from the larger, more painful reality of loss.

Then I drove 60 miles to the small town where our father is being cared for. He was sitting in a chair, eating, when I came in. As usual, he looked happy to see me, even though he doesn’t know who I am. His poor face had been badly scraped during his fall and was still red and raw.

Around him, other patients shuffle from place to place or sit, staring. The worst off are lying, bedridden, in their rooms. I can’t imagine what it must be like to work with patients who are slowly — or, in some cases, quickly — losing their minds; I think the people who work where Daddy lives are saints. He’s been there for seven years and has been cared for lovingly, always treated like an individual and not a disease.

But today, I had to tell the home manager that we would have to move Daddy to Austin. It’s simply too far away for us to manage right now; we need him nearer to us at a time when — his doctor assures me — his failures would come closer and closer together.

The home manager started to cry when I told her that. “I always knew we were going to have this conversation,” she said. “We’re going to miss him so much. Can we come and see him where he’ll be in Austin?”

Of course, of course, I kept saying. I felt terrible for them and Daddy both, terrible that I was having to do something like this, but knowing it was the only thing I could do.

So I sat with Daddy longer, and patted his hands, which are so much thinner than they used to be (those big hands that played softball without a glove). “You are loved by a lot of people,” I told him. He smiled back at me.